Opposable Thumbs —

Game Review: Cooking Mama (Wii)

Cooking Mama is what happens when a budget title tries unsuccessfully to step …

We gave the DS version of Cooking Mama the coveted "Buy" verdict because—even though it was shallow and lacked any real reason to keep going—it used the touchscreen well, was fun in small blasts if you were bored, and was only $20. It was cheap enough to be an impulse buy and cute enough to keep my interest for a quick play every now and again. I was excited about the Wii version of Cooking Mama; the game could have been made great with a story mode and some deeper gameplay. Add in multiplayer? Please, that would be very nice. I assumed that we were going to see some crazy upgrades when I noticed the price was $50. When I assumed, I made an "ass" out of "u" and "me."

The developers could have done all those nice things, but of course they didn't. The graphics are still bright and attractive; they have the sort of animated look that seems to work so well on the Wii. It's not a bad-looking game, but it also looks almost exactly like the DS version. When I have two games in my hand, and there is a $30 difference in price between them, I want to see some differences. Call me crazy, but the amount you pay for something does influence what you expect out of it. And it becomes clear very quickly that $50 is a high price for this game.

Luckily, there are other reasons for you to play this game, right? Of course not. There are many recipes, but you only cook them one after the other. There is no story, no linear progression, just a list of recipes that you can select from. You can unlock new ones as you go, but the presentation is so bland and boring that it's hard to care. To cook each recipe, you play a series of minigames that have to do with food, and generally you will wiggle your controller around and hope it works. There is not a lot of explanation about what you have to do to move ahead in each minigame. It can be frustrating.

The DS worked well in this regard. It was easy to tell where you had to cut or stir with the stylus. But with the Wiimote you will make a chopping motion and chop most of the onion and then... it just stops. Sometimes you can get it to work again by shaking it or it will pick up the signal through some voodoo, but it's frustrating when you feel like you're doing everything well and then the controller shorts out on you. I don't know why this is a problem in Cooking Mama, since I've used the remote for many hours in other games with few problems.

There is a multiplayer game: it involves cooking the recipes with a friend and competing on time and accuracy. It's a good idea, and competing with friends usually makes a game much more fun. The problem is when you're in the middle of a heated game and one of you suddenly runs into Wiimote problems, it makes the win hollow, and leads to much cursing. This costs $50, remember.

It's overpriced, underperforming, and doesn't even have the upside of keeping you busy on the go when you need a quick gaming fix. The DS version is still worth a play, but the Wii version is too thin to justify the price.